


Skins

by kittamine (shaderunner)



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst and Tragedy, Body Horror, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Child Murder, Crimson Peak Inspired, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Drama, Drama Heavy, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Fantasy, Force Bond (Star Wars), Fridge Horror, Gothic, Haunted Houses, Haunting, Heavy Angst, Inspired by Grimm Fairy Tales, Inspired by Music, Killing, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Macabre, Mythology References, Other, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Psychological Drama, Short, Survival Horror, Tragedy, Victorian, Victorian Attitudes, Victorian Science Fiction, Weird Plot Shit, Work In Progress, mood piece, short-fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-05-02 10:22:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14542623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaderunner/pseuds/kittamine
Summary: ◀︎ U P D A T E D | M O N T H L Y ▶︎(or weekly! depending on a few thingslike my life rofl)♦︎ SHORT FIC | MACABRE IMPRESSIONS | GHOSTLY SKETCHES ♦︎Kylo Ren is the handsome and enigmatic master of his dark citadel, revered by all. Especially his young wife. Together they lead a quiet life in the nebulous solar plexus of the galaxy. But when their first born disappears under mysterious circumstances, the young madame begins to realize that her life may not be what it seems.





	1. Prologue & Prophecy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  a work in progress! bear in mind that this is about as terse and rough as can be right now.  
> certain story elements are subject to change over time, sooo. think of this as a test run! :~)  
> ☟  
>  **comments & constructive feedback welcome!**  
>  **i know this is not your conventional plot bs. it's weird plot bs. indulge me~**  
> 

______________________________________________________________________❦_____________________________________________________________________

_Her heart had welled with joy when he said, “A baby? Of course I'm happy,” and again when the medical droid determined its sex. A boy of their very own! She hoped he would grow to be as striking as his father. If only he could have eyes as deep and dark as his, hair as lush, and cheekbones wonderfully as sloped. When the baby came she reached for his hand, and when Kylo Ren took hers, she felt as though it had become a small bird that was coming home to roost._

_“Jayce,” she said breathlessly as the medical droid asked what their child’s name would be. Their child! Their beautiful little boy. She smiled woozily at Kylo Ren from the medbay bed, and when she did she thought she saw a strange glimmer in Kylo Ren's eyes, but she forgot about it completely when he smiled back (a rarity in and of itself!) and took the baby into the arms that had both hurt her and held her many a time._

**I.**

When she stepped into the dining quarter that morning it was because she thought she smelled something different. She was in no shape to be moving so swiftly down the stairs, but the scent had a raw tang that made her ache in a way she had not known she could until she had been inducted into motherhood. Hunger or cramps or…?

She paused in the doorframe.

Kylo Ren was already seated at the table. He was dressed in black and he had placed that strange serrated cylinder beside him. He smiled again when he saw her. How odd! It sent chills crawling up her spine.

“Good morning, little one,” he said sweetly. “You look troubled.”

He was poking at his meal with a knife. It seemed as if he was trying to squash something that was squirming in his food, but there couldn't have been a stiller surface in the room.

“Whatever,” he asked, twirling his fork, “is the matter?”

“Nothing,” she murmured. Upon crossing the chamber she noticed the empty bassinet and chided herself for having not employed well-ordered handmaidens. This was all new to her, but she was learning.

“Sleepy, hungry.” She pouted. “You should have waited for me.”

“I'm sorry.”

Sometimes he was mean when she made innocent requests, but today he was sweet, and she couldn't help but smile too. Then she took a few steps toward him and her eyes fell on his plate. The meat looked strange. It was very red, and plump, and charred around the edges. She had never seen anything like it. Yet… It smelled good and familiar in a way she couldn't pinpoint. She wanted it. She shrugged and beamed at him as she took the seat diagonal to him. He seemed to lean over in awe when she eased the fork out of his hand.

“I know you don't like to share,” she teased, “But...”

She lowered her eyes coyly. “I hope you don't mind if I…”

“Oh no,” Kylo Ren replied, almost immediately. “I insist.”

She offered him a shy smile in thanks and slid a little of the meat onto the fork. Kylo Ren watched intently as she brought it to her lips. He looked as though he were waiting for something to happen. Suddenly, she was overcome by the fragrance that filled her nose and when she withdrew in aversion she thought she saw something splintered and white running through her portion. Was that what Kylo Ren had been working through earlier? She didn't mean to, but she gave a little cry, and the fork slipped through her fingers. She could feel the heat leaving her face and she did not doubt that she had paled for there was some sympathy in the depths of Kylo Ren’s eyes when he drew back and--of all things--chuckled!

“What?” He asked, as he retrieved the fallen fork. His line of vision didn’t leave her face for an instant. It was all she could do not to squirm beneath the weight of his gaze.

She gaped at him. He had asked her such a simple question, but no matter how much she willed herself, she was unable to speak. Her bottom lip trembled. How could she respond when she didn’t even know what it was that bothered her? When he was laughing at her! She was convinced that it was the potent smell that upset her, but now she was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t that suddenly complacent and frustratingly imposing air he had about him and how easily he could command it.

He waited for an answer and when he received none, Kylo Ren reclined into his chair and took a slow, calculated bite.


	2. Manor of Shadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  a work in progress! bear in mind that this is about as terse and rough as can be right now.  
> certain story elements are subject to change over time, sooo. think of this as a test run! :~)  
> ☟  
>  **comments & constructive feedback welcome!**  
>  **i know this is not your conventional plot bs. it's weird plot bs. indulge me~**  
> 

______________________________________________________________________❦_____________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________❦_____________________________________________________________________

_It dawned on her one night while she was nursing. After the little one had ceased his suckling she held him close against her breast so that his chin was resting on her shoulder. Oh, there was nothing in all the galaxy as precious, nor as wonderful as this. Nothing so warm, and soft, and delectable. Simply darling!  She smiled to herself._

_And then a chill. Yes, she felt it. At that moment something had changed. She found her little babe more cumbersome than usual as she prepared to lay him down for the evening. Stooping over the bassinet, she became quite still, and her breath shallowed.  That very stooped position was the manner in which the handmaidens found her, and my, how they had to pry the doll from her frozen arms._

_“But mightn’t the young madame like to say good-night?” The red-haired handmaid inquired. With her heart caught in her throat, the young madame turned and went away. There was a parable she’d heard when she was a girl about a thankless child who receives his well earned comeuppance when he comes home one eve to a false mother with a wooden tail seated at the sewing table.  She couldn't bring herself to look at the little bundle in the handmaid’s arms for fear that the eyes she’d peer into be fashioned of glass._

**II.**

After many hours of crying, her cheekbones were feverish and her eyes were reddish and puffed, well-nigh the size of ripened peaches. She crawled onto the bed beside Kylo Ren and upon facing him felt an immeasurable gratitude for the invariably nebulous state of their bedchamber.

“Do you care for me?” She asked, and reached for him.

“Inevitably,” He responded.

Although she knew he would not declare it outright, his tone was so verily approving, and his touch so gentle as he handled her that it cast all doubt from her mind. He must have cared for her just as he would have their first child. For what other reason would they embrace this way in the dark?

Kylo Ren smoothed his hand over her loose hair, stroking her from her shoulders to the dimples in the small of her back. She closed her eyes. She found that his touch caused her to lie in a painful fit of unrest of late, but this night she really did feel like his little bird again, safe in the burrow of his arm.

Although their little Jayce was gone, the young madame still felt his small, unwavering presence in her bones. She thought perhaps this “knowing” was the virtue of a young mother’s intuition, but Kylo Ren had cast a peculiar gaze upon her when she told him this, and addressed it in a curiously blithe manner. No, his little sunpetal could not, _must not_ claim this power as her own. It was none but The Force, the very  energy that encompassed all things. This he'd assured her heedless of the way he went about wielding it. But she held her tongue. The Force had bound them together after all and perhaps that meant Kylo Ren too felt the absence of his infant son.

“Have heart, my bloodflower.”

“I have your love,” she whispered. Hadn’t she? Hadn’t that been enough in days past? While waiting in vain for Kylo Ren's response, the young madame drifted off. Later she woke to find herself alone, and plying the cold sheets between her fingers, she understood that he’d left a long while since, whereupon she shivered and turned over. Much to her dismay, as soon as she was prone again, she noticed a dark figure perched in the oddly shaped, sinewy chair that Kylo Ren insisted upon keeping in their rooms.

Was that him? She asked, and wished she hadn’t.

Rather than respond in the customary, verbal sense, the figure in the chair moved gradually toward her, making a wet, muffled noise as it went. Its silhouette much resembled that of her master’s shadow, but it couldn’t have been him. Kylo Ren could be brash, and sometimes he was so hard to understand that he was positively abstruse, but he would never taunt her this way. Not whilst she was coming out of one delicate condition and slipping into the deluge of entirely another! Oh, he couldn’t possibly.

“Do you know what happened to our child?” She whispered frantically. “My dear Jayce? Do you? What have you done with him? Or are those dreadful handmaidens to blame? What has become of him?”

The figure paused, and in leaning forward to rest an elbow on a jagged knee, it seemed to ponder her frenzied inquiry.  But the sounds the body made as it shifted its weight were not at all how she would describe a shadow; soft, and hushed, and velveteen  It sounded rather like a sack of skins. All at once aware of her own naked flesh the young madame pulled the sheets about her shoulders.

It wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been. It was a facsimile of her husband and she was merely lost in a feverish dream without hope of waking. She was only too glad henceforth to hear the doors to their bedchamber hiss open, to watch as the dim light took the shadow figure away with it. And she was all the more overjoyed to see Kylo Ren standing there.

“Oh, thank heavens!” She started.

“What is it?’ Asked Kylo Ren, who, after some hesitation, gingerly made his way across the carpet, in the direction of the chair, and the alloy chiffonier that maintained its monolithic shadow over it . Leonine and magnificent he was as he moved, and his dark and searching eyes... Once more a chill swept through her, rattling her very soul.

She stammered, “I thought I…”

And the young madame meant to continue, but just then (and as to why she could not begin to detail) she stopped herself. How could she respond when she still could not discern what it was that troubled her so? She swiveled away from the darkened corner of the room to look upon Kylo Ren instead. Coyly, she murmured, “Oh, but never mind. I missed you.” And smiled. Slowly.


	3. Gehenna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  a work in progress! bear in mind that this is about as terse and rough as can be right now  
> certain story elements are subject to change over time, sooo. think of this as a test run! :~)  
> ☟  
>  **comments & constructive feedback welcome!**  
>  **i know this is not your conventional plot bs. it's weird plot bs. indulge me~**
> 
>  
> 
> Also: Thinking of updating this more frequently if there's any interest.  
> Or maybe because I just want to get to the shadow man reveal. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> 

  _ _

_______________________________________________________________________❦______________________________________________________________________

_Her heart was cold, and still, and fluttered only marginally when the medical droid eased her newborn daughter into her arms. It was as though a chick had nested in her ribcage. Her heart was a hatchling songbird, naked and blind. It had learned when to burrow and keep hushed. Sometimes it would stay sealed, brooding for weeks at a time until it was certain that it could raise its unseemly, malformed little head and sing._

_The young madame named her child Gehenna. She was so small and her flesh almost translucent. Her veins were blonde and her body fit into the crook of an arm like a waning moon, a small hook of light._

_Kylo Ren had murmured something about the sheer magnitude of light that lived in their child. He might have even been moved by it, but the young madame didn’t say a thing. She barely felt anything beyond the flitter in her breast when he reached for them.  It was a beautiful name, he had said. And as he stroked Gehenna’s head, he looked at her. His little bird._

_The young madame found his eyes and they did not break contact until her daughter began to whimper. Then her heart began to wail._

**III.**  

An imperial doctor could not say what was wrong with her, but that came as no surprise. He simply pushed salves and tonics into her as though she were a pin cushion with no regard for her physiological nature. Poking at her as if she were dead, he was! A body, a bag of bones without person and soul. She thought of the shadow man, then vomited. Streams of lucent jelly hung from her nose. They were the remnants of a meal they’d shared the morning before. 'Alien delicacy' was the term Kylo Ren had used to describe it. He’d chuckled as she wrinkled her nose at the plate.

“It’s an acquired taste,” Kylo Ren had said.

“It’s delicious,” she had countered, and she spooned a heapful of the glistening pulp into her mouth without reservation. Its aroma was simply irresistible. It must have come from several star systems away, but it smelled like _home._ And now she was ill.

Five handmaidens and a governess could not say what ailed her. But they _knew_. They were women. And the young madame, flustered by their efforts to keep her calm and tidy, flailed at them and had them dispelled from her quarters. At the redheaded girl she had chucked the doll, which shattered willy-nilly across the dark wood. The floor now looked as though it had been hushed in fresh fallen snow. A single glass eye pleaded with her to be quiet. She would not.

Kylo Ren studied her from his perch on his sinewed chair.

“You’re being hysterical,” he said, matter of fact.

“Hysterical?” The young madame echoed. “Nobody is listening!”

Kylo Ren appraised her silently.

“You haven't been saying anything.”

He leaned across his girth, rested an elbow upon his knee.

 _That thing!_ She thought of it and recoiled. But of course, he was right. She had burrowed her nestling heart deep down within her. Burrowing, burrowing. Deeper and deeper.

“What is it you have to say, Insera?”

He addressed her by name. The young madame released a single breath that wavered like a cord of steam in the cold. She remembered suddenly, the name bringing with it years of a life lost in regression.

She recalled a light of a bizarre blue hue. Indifferent and unafraid, centered solely upon itself.*  She recalled a gallery, closets going to dust in the gloom, a steel battle helmet upon a plinth, a key she was left with, but never to use.  A sound like the crack of a hammer, ashes disturbed from their urns. And the children.

“Our baby,” she managed. “Nobody seems to care. Nobody notices. Nobody at all. I just want to hold her. Bring her to me, please. Bring her here.”

Kylo Ren leaned in further, rested a cool hand on her forearm. After a beat he said, “We have never had a child together.”

And Insera, hard as she tried, found that she simply couldn't hear him any longer. He had begun to recede from view like a trick of the light.

・・▼・・

When she awoke, the shadow  was still there. It followed her across the dark womb of her bedchamber. Insera tasted fear and bile on her tongue as she watched last morning’s meal churn down the refresher. The shadow seemed to shudder away, shedding its dark skin for the starlight that crept through a distant viewport.

Insera got to her feet, knees cold from kneeling on the tile so very long. She wiped a final strand of pulp from her chin and flipped on the luminator switch. But the light panel offered her no reprieve. She was still shaking. Her hand hung in the air and her entire body began to flare, her skin pricking beneath her nightdress as though every synapse and sensory neuron in her body had been set aflame. There, propped against the refresher glass, was the thing that sopped and swished whenever it moved. And it was no shadow.

She hadn’t been able to place what had bothered her so before. But now. Now she could.  


	4. Ben

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  a work in progress! bear in mind that this is about as terse and rough as can be right now.  
> certain story elements are subject to change over time, sooo. think of this as a test run! :~)  
> ☟  
>  **comments & constructive feedback welcome!**  
>  **i know this is not your conventional plot bs. it's weird plot bs. indulge me~**

  
______________________________________________________________________❦_____________________________________________________________________

_The first thing she heard was a voice. Then, suddenly, the young madame found herself wandering through an old, adumbral hall. Here was a place filled to the brim with a darkness so solid she could almost reach out and touch it. But it was not so dark that she had no sense of where she was going._

_She was able to follow a dull, intermittent thrumming coming from somewhere within. It sounded as though something were living in the gallery walls and following her down its every twist and turn. Perhaps she should have been afraid, but Insera had burrowed her nestling heart deep within her own physical armory, one she’d convinced herself none could penetrate._

_The young madame walked a little further and when she finally reached the end of the hall she found the only working door. There were others she’d tried, but these were comprised of hinges that were rusted shut, stiles dusted with soot snowcaps. This one was different. The walls beyond its frame made hushed warning noises as she approached and they seemed to be telling her to “go away.” Yet she did not heed them. She couldn't any longer._

_She was never to use it, but Insera withdrew the key she’d buried in her skirts, placed it into the lock and turned it. The hall became still so suddenly thereafter she’d almost forgotten to push the door open. What she saw behind it was a fleshy thing that appeared to have grown into the corner of the room like a chrysalis and contained a small, mottled form. The thing began to expand when something broke through the film- a limb. Then a child fell out after it, and as it continued to grow,  Insera swiftly shut the door._

**IV.**

Insera had dipped into Kylo Ren’s mind without permission and now she was unable to shake what she had seen. She froze and again watched the thing unfold in the refresher stall. It seemed as if she were observing first hand the raw memory of a man- a hollowed out husk with holes where the eyes should be. This anamnesis of the flesh had given her quite a shock, but what it would go on to say was enough to reveal the seams in all she had come to believe since she’d met Kylo Ren. (But more accurately, perhaps, since she’d invaded the barrier which guarded the fibers of his psyche.)

At present it muttered “Rey?” and quivered as it spoke, as though it had not the structure nor the strength to vocalize let alone move. And yet it did, slowly inching its way towards her like a snail loosening its half shed carapace by roughing itself against a wall. Only the glass stall stood between them.

Insera was too stunned to answer.

“Is that you?” It asked and waited.

Finding her voice at last, she uttered “No.”

And the skin, whose natural state seemed to be one in which it was always agape, given its mouth and eyes were but the holes in the Earth where one might find other pale and fleshy things squirming, murmured: “What do you call yourself?”

“Insera,” Replied she.

“Oh.”

It sounded disappointed. Then, with a more hopeful mien it asked,

“Do you know who _I_ am?”

“No,” she murmured. “No, I’m sorry.”

“I’m Ben,” it said, its tone one of utter abjectness. The skin wanted her to meet its eyes, she was sure of it. (Or at least it wanted her to look where the eyes once _had_ been!) But Insera couldn’t bring herself to face the creature again and so as she began to back out of the refresher, she cast her eyes upon the floor instead.

“I’m sorry, Ben. I’ve never met you before. Now I best get back to bed before I disturb my dear Kylo...”

Was she mad? What was she doing speaking aloud to a creature she had likely conceived in her own mind? There never was a child, much less a skin. This was truly a dreadful situation and she quaked at the thought of what might happen if she were caught carrying on as such. And so the young madame rushed towards the exit.

“Wait-” The skin urged her, its voice wavering from the sheer effort it took to be heard.

Before she'd a chance to close the door it croaked, “What of Kylo Ren?”

It seemed his words had cast some sort of a spell upon her for in the next moment she found that she had paused in the doorframe with her fingers hovering over the knob in stasis.

“You know him?” She ventured.

“Yes, well,” rasped the skin.

She peered at it from behind the door.

“Oh, I was a large part of his life for some time,” it lamented, cradling its head with its elongated and tapered hands. “I’m not now, as you can see, but... “

The little bird she kept arrested in her chest shook out its wings, which seemed to make the skin flinch. Looking through its hands somewhat shyly it asked her, “Are you sure we’ve never met before?”

Although her entire body was so ravaged with fear that her knees felt as though they were water, Insera inched a little further into the room again. Her nestling heart shook out its wings and began to flutter, and it would not stop no matter how much she willed it. She knew she had opened a door that could never be closed again.

Too lost in thought to hear his approaching footsteps, the young madame started when Kylo Ren slunk into the refresher, hair mussed in a way only she had ever seen, eyes red-rimmed. On top of that his flesh was of a greyish pallor. These were the telltale signs of a bad night’s rest, to be sure.

Kylo Ren hung in the doorway like a ghost caught somewhere between the starlight and the pitch black.

“What _is it_ you're doing _now,_ Insera?” He demanded. Then he yawned and Insera saw that sleep was still in his eyes. Perhaps she could usher him back to bed before he grew cognizant of the skin’s presence, but his livid pupils were already darting about the room. At last his eyes caught on something in the background and he looked as though he’d stumbled upon something he’d lost but never intended to find.

Kylo Ren seemed so transfixed by what he saw that as he looked a feeling of terrible awe awashed her and Insera finally turned round to face the creature. The minute that she did, however, she saw that she had merely pendulated towards a darkness, and in the next instant tears had sprung to her eyes, for she could not reconcile all that had come to pass. 

_Where had it gone? What was happening to her?_

Kylo Ren took a long last look at the empty refresher before closing the door. After a beat he caught Insera by the small of her back and gently steered her away. 

 


End file.
